L'aura del Campo

Once I had a dream. Response to Basho.

L'aura del campo

WINTER: 16 Sharaf (15 January) 10º and slippery.

'é a lua, é a lua, na quintana dos mortos'
♣ Federico García Lorca ♣

I had a dream once too

I think you have to have dreams to feel totally alive. Everyone does so in their own way of course.

Martin Luther King had a dream of bringing people together and at the same time lifting the yoke of oppression. A student of Gandhi, he was able to achieve a lot before he was assassinated at age 39.

My dreams also have centered on bringing people together. It was why I joined in the Interfaith Thanksgiving Worship Service for so many years. My favorite moment was hearing the Muslim call to prayer in a synagogue. I also was able to have our community represented by women for most of the years and we were the first to be represented by a child of 12. She did well in the Greek Orthodox Church.

For many years 1988-2002 I invited people to my home every August for a "We, too, have a dream barbeque" in commemoration of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech (August 28, 1963). One year there were 150 people (all over the place!).

And I opened up my house and home to refugees from Iran, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Somalia, Romania, Viet Nam and Argentina. My Spanish improved tremendously.

So, yes, I've had a dream.

When others exclude me from their definition of humanity it hurts me to the core, but my dream encompasses even them. It is important to have dreams.

Response to Basho

O Basho,

I could walk the paths you strolled along and never see what you saw. You would be jotting down the neon colors of the Ginza while I'd look for the black pines of your travels. You'd speak of the glint off skyscrapers; I'd look for the past and youth.

In your wisdom you'd be reminding me: 'be present, be present, be present'.

Love jumps in a pond
centuries after the splash
ripples reach the frog.

[163.550b,a]

The weather ... sunny and frigid. Definitely winter. It turned icy with only a few flakes. About 2 inches of the slippery everywhere. It was worse east and south of here. We were spared. Bitter cold tonight. Might bottom out at zero.

I've been ill. Couldn't sleep Saturday night due to the pressure and pain on the right side of my face. Sunday morning I got some aspirin, so I'm doing a bit better. It's boring to be so ill that reading or writing is nauseating.

Thursday night I saw Odessa (a brasileira) with a group of new foreign students from Japan, Costa Rica, France, Mali, Congo, Italia, Deutchland. I had a good time. I was also able to connect her with Gaston (el boliviano) in DC which delighted me. Odessa graduates in May and will need a job to extend her visa. Gaston may have some pointers.

A thought from 2 a.m. Saturday: "it is amazing that where the presence of human artifacts end, the universe expands forever." I was thinking of Montana.

I finished watching "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Babette's Feast" (one of the most uplifting films ever made. I can really relate to it. Kindness counts.).

Got a piece of cake at the end of a 60th birthday party for one of the local 'Bikers-for-Jesus' dudes. Nice folks. I guess Donna has a '04 Classic softail. It reminds me of the card I sent to Gary: "Frog on a hog".

Eileen and Gary Strong are awesome people. Eileen makes a wonderful butter (butter, margarine, cream cheese with spices, in this case: honey, basil, sage and a pinch of pepper, salt and garlic).

Finished reading "On a narrow road" by Lesley Downer. She follows Basho's travel through the north and finds that time has not erased everything. Very good writing. Makes me want to visit rural Japan before it is entirely modernized and homogenized.

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